Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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1849. To ask the Minister for Health his plans to change the policy enforced by health insurance companies which mean that persons with a pre-existing condition moving to Ireland must wait five years before cover can commence; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21264/22]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy for her question in relation to waiting periods on pre-existing conditions for persons moving to Ireland.  

In Ireland we have a community-rated health insurance market which is underpinned by carefully constructed and robust legislation. A Risk Equalisation Scheme operates in the health insurance market as a support to our system of community-rated health insurance. Our risk equalisation scheme is a carefully crafted scheme with permission required from the European Commission for its operation.

Any individual who takes out health insurance as a new entrant, whether resident here or returning from abroad, may have to serve waiting periods before they are fully covered, but accident and injury will be covered immediately. The maximum waiting period for illnesses that start after you join is 26 weeks; and for pre-existing illnesses which existed in the 6 months before you join is 5 years. Once these waiting periods are served, an individual will not have to serve them again if they choose to switch to another insurer, as long as there hasn’t been a break in cover of more than 13 weeks.

The application of waiting periods help support community rating and is an important tool for insurers to combat practices where someone could potentially take out a health insurance policy to avail of a particular treatment and then cancel the policy once treatment had been received, without either penalty or sustained contribution to the community-rated system.

Private health insurance companies are restricted by legislation from imposing more than 5 years as a waiting period for pre-existing conditions. The law imposes a maximum waiting period but not a minimum period. Insurers can therefore shorten this waiting period, or waive it entirely, as a matter of competitive practice. However, this is a commercial decision, and I cannot compel any private health insurer to provide any product or service, beyond what is included in the minimum benefit regulations.

Given that the European Commission only recently approved the new Risk Equalisation Scheme for the Irish market for the forthcoming 5 years, there are no immediate plans to alter the basis of our health insurance market.